Search form

What's New

After discussing the review of the DDI-Views Q2 Development Review with attendees at EDDI 2016, the Technical Committee has decided to extend the review period to 15 January 2017. Please note that the PDF version of the documentation is now available. The Comment and Review Page is found at

EDDI16, the 8th Annual European DDI User Conference, took place December 6-7, 2016, in Cologne, Germany. The conference was hosted by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, and organized jointly by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

There were 91 participants from 50 organizations in 17 countries in attendance. The conference program included 37 presentations and 6 posters, 3 tutorials, and 7 side meetings. Keynote addresses were given by Keith Jeffery ("Metadata: Foundation, Philosopher’s and Rosetta Stones"), and Stefan Winkler-Nees ("Funding, Policies, Community Building - Data Sharing from a Funders Perspective").

Save the date for the next EDDI!

EDDI2017 will be hosted by FORS - Swiss Center of Expertise in the Social Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 5-6, 2017.

The DDI Alliance is pleased to announce the Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI Views, sometimes called DDI4. The comment period for the Q2 Draft is now open. Information on the review process is available from the DDI4 - Comment and Review page, which contains a link to comment instructions and to the release package itself (see the box labeled Current Review in the middle of the page).

DDI is transitioning to a model-driven specification to support new content and domains, to provide needed flexibility in rendering and packaging, and to ensure a sustainable development process for DDI going forward. The model will enable use-case driven "functional views" of the full model so that prospective DDI users can receive only the subset of DDI classes they need for a specific task or function (e.g., create a simple codebook). The transition also includes moving to a fully automated production framework to create the specification, bindings, and documentation. More information about the DDI work products and how they all fit together is available.

This release is one of several iterative releases, each of which builds on previous releases. The Q2 Draft includes the class descriptions and diagrams for several of the basic parts of the model, XML Bindings, and high level documentation. We are currently working out issues with the RDF/OWL implementation.

We are eager to obtain feedback from the DDI community in order to improve what we have and to validate our approach. The comment period is open until December 31, 2016, and we hope to hear from you.

The DDI Alliance welcomes Blaise - Statistics Netherlands as a Full Member! Harry J.A. Wijnhoven, Deputy CIO of Statistics Netherlands/CBS and CEO Blaise, is the Member Representative and Lon Hofman is the Scientific Representative.

We have an opening on the Executive Board and are looking for nominations for candidates to fill this elected position through June 2017, when a new round of elections for four-year terms will take place.

This is a good opportunity for members who are interested in participating on the Executive Board, but without the long-term commitment. We are especially looking for representatives from Europe to fill this opening.

If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague to this position, please contact Jared Lyle, DDI Alliance Director, by October 7th. Email or phone: lyle@umich.edu or (734) 763-6075.

Two weeks of workshops will begin on October 17th, to be held at Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics.

The first week (Oct. 17-21) will focus on interoperability between DDI and other metadata standards. The workshop will bring together representatives from the following metadata standards: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and RDF community, Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX), Research Data Alliance (RDA), Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM), health standards, DDI, and other related standards. The meeting will focus on the review of the current DDI work, discuss how best to work collaboratively, how to be aware of each standard’s developments, and to investigate opportunities for developing joint projects. To read more about the first workshop, please follow this link.

The second week (Oct. 24-28) continues the development work of the model-based specification of DDI (DDI Version 4). The focus of this ‘sprint’ is spread across four main areas: Documentation, expansion of data capture and description, controlled vocabularies, and funding opportunities. To read more about the second workshop, please follow this link.

The 8th Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI16) will take place December 6-7, 2016 in Cologne, Germany. EDDI16 is organized jointly by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

The meeting will bring together DDI users and professionals from all over Europe and the world. The program offers 2 keynotes, 28 presentations, 3 discussion sessions, and 6 posters. Three tutorials and 6 side meetings will take place before and after the conference. This year, the conference organizers are encouraging papers which focus on re-use of software and re-use of administered software. Examples of this could be question banks, re-use of software components and provision of services which foster re-use. Also encouraged are papers which discuss barriers to the creation and uptake and maintenance of such re-use. Anyone interested in developing, applying, or using DDI is invited to attend and present.

The latest issue of DDI Directions was published on September 22nd. It includes reports on the NADDI 2016 conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the Annual DDI meetings held in Bergen, Norway. The newsletter also highlights the contributions of DDI members engaged in working groups or committees, including the Marketing and Partnerships Group, the Training Group, the Technical Committee, and the Moving Forward project. Also in this issue is a new column, "ReadWrite-Execute (RWX)", written by Knut Wenzig (DIW Berlin), that will highlight both existing and new DDI and metadata-related publications produced by the DDI Community.

The DDI Alliance welcomes the Consortium of Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) as a Full Member! Hossein Abroshan, Chief Technical Officer, is the Member Representative and the Scientific Representative.